My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Butler, introduced his excellent amendment, he prefaced it by saying that he was strongly in favour of the 0.7% target. I will preface my brief remarks by saying that I am not in favour of the 0.7% target and that I am not alone. In an earlier debate, one noble Lord mentioned the role of Select Committees in all this. The only Select Committee of your Lordships’ House to have looked at this issue in great detail is the Economic Affairs Committee, which, under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord MacGregor, produced a unanimous report. It was unanimous because the evidence was so strong that 0.7% should not be a plank, let alone the plank, of the Government’s policy in this area and that least of all should it be enshrined in legislation.
What I am in favour of is economic development, and particularly of helping the poorest countries of the world, and the poorest people in those countries, to have a better standard of living. We received evidence about the role that ODA played in that process, and I am glad to say that since this ridiculous target was first suggested in the 1950s and then agreed by the United Nations in 1970, the world has changed. One of the great changes is that there has been an improvement in the countries of the so-called emerging world, and it has not been due to overseas aid. As my noble friend Lord Howell mentioned, there are other things that are far more important, although when my noble friend the Minister replied, she seemed to be totally unaware of this. She said, “Of course there are other things; DfID and other government agencies are doing this and doing that”—but it is not government agencies, it is the expansion of trade and, above all, the massive expansion of private capital flows to these countries that has made the change, not government aid.